The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, has gone all in. He has gathered his chips together, placed them center-table, and invited his rivals to show their hands.
Rather than wait for the House of Commons standards watchdog to adjudicate on his controversial donations from crypto dealers, he has resigned his seat, called a by-election, and challenged the “establishment” to defeat him. He certainly has cojones. But has he signed his own political death warrant? The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has said his resignation today is “an admission of guilt.”
Resigning a parliamentary seat in order to force a by-election is a very risky tactic, especially for a controversial politician like Nigel Farage. He won Clacton-on-Sea two years ago with an 8,000-vote majority, 46 percent of the vote. But as we have seen in recent by-elections in Makerfield and Gorton and Denton, tactical voting by anti-Farage voters can destroy Reform UK candidates even in areas where, on paper, they should be winners.
The Reform leader is, as he made clear in his statement today, at the end of his tether. He is facing not one but potentially two disciplinary inquiries by Standards Commissioner Daniel Greenberg for failing to declare gifts from cryptocurrency dealers: £5 million from the Thailand-based billionaire Christopher Harbourne, and gifts in kind from another businessman with crypto connections, George Cottrell, who was sentenced to eight months in a U.S. jail in 2017 for wire fraud.
Farage has insisted that these gifts were “purely personal” and that he was therefore under no obligation to declare them on the register of MPs’ financial interests. But he clearly suspects that the commissioner is unlikely to agree, both because of the sheer size of the Harbourne donation and because it was accepted within 12 months of Farage becoming an MP.
If censured by Greenberg, MPs would undoubtedly vote for Farage to be suspended from the House of Commons. That in itself could cause a by-election. It only requires 10 percent of voters in a constituency to trigger a recall petition against an MP suspended by Parliament. Even in a rather right-wing area like Clacton, there is no doubt that 7,500 registered voters would certainly be willing to force Farage out.
American observers have recently had cause to be astonished by the quirks of the British system of democracy. Seven prime ministers in a decade. Andy Burnham, the latest, walking into the British equivalent of the White House, 10 Downing Street, without an election or even a leadership contest. His predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, was forced to resign despite having won a landslide election only two years ago.
Now the politician who, according to recent opinion polls, had been on course to become the eighth prime minister—that is, Nigel Farage—has been driven out of Parliament because he received perfectly legal (if ethically questionable) gifts of cash and support before he entered Parliament.
Needless to say, the left are rejoicing at the downfall of “the grifter,” as the Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, styles Farage. Needless to say, the Right are claiming that this has all been, in Farage’s words, “a hit job” by the establishment.
“It seems to me,” Farage said in his statement, “the establishment have now decided that they can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means.”
Farage made no attempt to disguise the fact that he is a wealthy businessman. “Making money is not a crime,” he said. Indeed, he celebrated it, claiming that no one in the Labour Cabinet has any concept of how to run a business.
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He said he needed the Harbourne cash for security because he is “the most physically and verbally attacked politician of modern times.” His life was in constant danger. Farage recounted a previously unreported incident where he was accosted by a violent mob surrounding his car, which “had to be written off.”
The Reform leader went on to accuse the Sunday Times of targeting his daughter by publishing a photograph of where she lived, and he accused Sky News of “lying” about whether journalists had harassed his family.
He is angry, all right—but is this reckless gamble the right course of action for his opinion-poll-leading party? Farage is Reform UK. There is no one else with his charisma and ability to connect with ordinary people. If he loses the by-election, he will be out of politics for good. That would leave Reform leaderless and rudderless.
